and the university of nottingham

Monthly Archives: March 2012

Recently the thrill laboratory was contracted by Alton Towers’ PR department to help them launch their new Experience “Nemesis Sub Terra” (http://www.altontowers.com/nemesis-sub-terra/?gclid=CPz-mq2S7K8CFWrptgodvw6dNA). As is becoming verging on the de regur, we took a collection of journalists, strapped them up with biosensors using the nexus 10s and (hopefully fo one of the last times) biotrace. We then measured their ECG, Respiration and EDA and gave them a rough “thrill score.”

Why is this remotely interesting? Well – two reasons. First it was one more demonstration of things that are difficult with biotrace. Because the thrill score was dependant on multiple sensor sources it couldn’t easily be calculated on the fly with biotrace so we had to just do sums in our heads. This gives us a good excuse to look at using our new software architecture (Vicarious) which gives us the flexibility to do a lot more with this kind of stuff. Second, it’s been a little bit of a trial of the idea of explicit “thrill scores.” The formula probably needs some tweaking but it’s getting there. Watch this space and you’ll likely see more about thrill scores in the coming year.

The following are links to the various newspaper articles about the event: